naire to all the evacuees over the age of 17 (Daniels 50). There were ten WRA camps during WWII. Most were in remote areas in the states of Arizona, Wyoming, Utah, Arkansas, and California. The most infamous was the camp in Topaz, Utah where 8,130 Japanese were detained (Taylor 19). The move to these internment camps was a difficult journey for many of the Japanese Americans. Many of them were taken directly from their homes and allowed only to bring what they could carry. Mine Okubo, then a young girl moving to the internment camps gave her testimony of the trek. Daily life was described in her journal. Meals consisted mainly of potatoes and bread, horse stables used to house the evacuees were described as skeletons “smelling of manure” and bathrooms where “endless lines violated privacy due to the lack of doors or partitions”(Okubo 11). For each person in that camp she wrote in her diary, “it seemed like a prisoner’s hell, each day passing slower than the last” (Okubo 25). Okubo’s descriptions of the camp life in Topaz gave the whole internment an insight and a voice. The camps represented a prison: no freedom, no privacy, no “America”. Many families were separated and they did not know when they would see each other again. (Brimner 4). Internment was not a choice; it was considered a patriotic duty to prove Japanese-American’s loyalty through submission to their new country. They had to believe in the government’s reasoning and put their trust in their new country (Brimner 5). The years following the orders for the Japanese to be relocated would be frustrating and depressing for many (Brimner 10). The Japanese expression “shi kata ganai” was adopted for these troublesome times (Brimner 16). War crimes were abundant during the internment. Many shooting and beatings occurred and most court cases were ei...
